


Ekaprtaktva

by Golden_Daughter



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18616825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Daughter/pseuds/Golden_Daughter
Summary: Gandhari's thoughts on her life, featuring her relationships.





	Ekaprtaktva

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/gifts).



> For @avani008. I'm really sorry, avani di, this story ended up very different from what I had envisioned! Anyway, I hope it is to your liking.  
> Title means: Unity and distinctness.  
> Prompt: Bitter, brilliant Shakuni is a fascinating character, and regardless of what backstory you want to use for his gripe against Hastinapur (his sister's marriage to a blind man/Bhishma's conquest/just plain nastiness), I'd love to see that explored. Or: Shakuni and Gandhari, who are both such polar opposites with regards to morality--are they more alike than anyone realizes at first? If not, how do they reconcile their drastically different goals and motivations with their love and affection for each other? Do they miss Gandhara, and (how) do they keep its traditions and culture alive in Hastinapur? Alternatively, Shakuni & Amba/Shikandi is my crack!platonic pairing--despite having no canonical evidence whatsoever, I think their shared hatred of Bhishma and the Kurus as well as similar anger and revenge could easily drive them into a friendship (only to have it complicated by the fact that they end up on opposite sides.)

Apeksha’s eyes belied her name as she looked to her older brother desperately. They had just lost the sovereignty of their homeland to the overmighty Kurus. At Shakuni’s side, Matashree and Pitashree were sitting pensively, ostensibly discussing a “treaty”, in actuality listening to the terms of their vassalhood. Shakuni’s head jerked up sharply when he heard his sister being mentioned. Apeksha’s gaze was locked into his own, waiting to hear her fate. “The Princess shall be married to Dritrashtra, my nephew,” Devrath Bhishma said easily in his sonorous tones.

Apeksha and Shakuni look at each other in mutual horror for a moment before Pitaskree nods. _Of course. Who bothers to ask the girl who is to wed or her brother?_

Apeksha looks pleadingly at her father as Devrath Bhishma leaves. “Father, please, there must be some other way!” Saubala shakes his head. “I wish there was, daughter, we all wish there was. But, as kings and princes, we have to sacrifice our happiness for our people. You have sacrificed my happiness for your pride, father, Apeksha thought angrily. But, she knew she had to submit to them. For they truly had no choice.

Apeksha’s entry into Hastinapur is hushed and quiet, but grand nonetheless. She, however, pays no attention to her surroundings, her thoughts lost in foreboding. What was going to happen to her? Inwardly, she came to a decision. The Kurus might have made her submit, but she’ll submit on her own terms.

Apeksha drank in the sight of the gardens, the colourful world around her. This, she had decided, would be her last act as Apeksha, the daughter of Gandhar. Her hands inch towards the fine silk sash. From now on, she thinks, she shall be Gandhari, princess of Gandhar. She ties the sash over her eyes.

Shakuni is horrified at his sister’s decision. “Apeksha, this is folly! Losing your sight as a sacrifice for your husband? Duty is one thing, sister, but this is quite another!” His sister holds her head high. “Bhratashree, did you really believe that I am doing this out of wifely duty?” she asks in a fervent whisper. Shakuni gapes at his sister, finally understanding. But, he waited for her to verbalize it. “This is outwardly my adherence to duty, brother. To my own self, it is a symbol of what the Kurus did to our homeland. I will not pretend to be the pliant princess. If they want me, they have to take me this way.” And so they do.

When Gandhari meets her husband-to-be, she is struck by the absence of hatred towards him in her mind.  Instead, there is frank curiosity when she tries to make sense of him, her eyes still bound. She learns that he has a sonorous voice, light footsteps and is sure of himself. She learns many things that she might not have, were she still sighted. She learns that Pandu is an attentive younger brother, that he tries taking care of his elder, which vexes Dritrashtra, she can read it in the tense way he answers Pandu.

At the end of it, Gandhari takes herself by shock as she thinks, ‘Well, this is a relationship that might work.’ Against her will, she feels some of her hatred beginning to dissolve.

Dritrashtra and Gandhari have a marriage that is fond. However, sometimes, Gandhari longs to be Apeksha once more, not bound to duty, the carefree girl she had been. At moments like these, Bhrata Shakuni is her balm. Together, they keep Gandhar alive in the midst of Hastinapur.   

When Pritha arrives, Gandhari strikes up an immediate friendship with the young, unsure girl she is. She guides Pritha to her new reality as the Queen of Hastinapur. Somewhere, there is jealousy flaring in Gandhari, but Pritha is blameless in that, she knows. So she lets the younger girl hold her hand.

Events cascade out of Gandhari’s control as she watches. It all culminates in Pandu’s exile with Pritha and Madri. Gandhari is pregnant then. She remains so for two years, no sign of end in sight. Finally, frustrated, her promised 100 children enter this world, but there is an odd foreboding in the depths of her soul. What would become of these children, she wondered, when they were born out of frustration?

She would live long enough to find out, and wish she had not.

The next great upheaval in her life arrives when a rain-sodden Pritha stands at Hastinapur’s threshold, five young boys holding on to her hand. At her side, she hears her brother let out a hiss of surprise. For a moment, she does not understand. Then she suddenly does. The oldest of Pritha’s boys was older than her Duryodhana. Gods. Gandhari’s mind recoiled from harming innocent children, and she placed a restraining hand on her brother’s shoulder, as Bhishma welcomes them in with a formal smile.

Gandhari understands Bhrata Shakuni’s concern for his nephews, but she balks at such inhumanity as to killing little children, she thinks as she looks at Pritha at her side. One of her sons is also with her. The boy notices her and murmurs a quiet greeting. Gandhari knows that Kunti’s children and hers will have to exist in the uneasy accord that has already formed. Pritha smiles, a fragile thing, even as her son asks for her permission and runs behind Bhishma, a bow in his hand.

Gandhari and Pritha do remain friends, but underneath that, there is an uneasy current that spoke of conflicts to come.

Years pass by. The bond between Gandhari and her brother is no longer what it was, but it is there nonetheless, frayed yet held together by a shared solidarity. Perhaps, it is Gandhari’s restraint that stops him from attacking Pritha’s children outright, as far as she knows.

When the boys return from the Gurukul, they are changed, and yet the same. Duryodhana and her other sons still look to their uncle more than their mother, to her grief. It is at moments like these that she regrets forever closing her eyes.

Pritha is happy, after years of stilted grief. She has her children back, and is almost radiant. She talks endlessly of how her sons are, of how Yudhisthira is all one wishes in an elder son, of how quiet, shy Arjun has blossomed into a warrior of note, of how the twins have grown so. Her second-eldest and Gandhari’s eldest are never talked of between them, as if by not talking, they can make the simmering enmity between their sons disappear.

Bhrata Shakuni and her children are happy when they hear of the Varnavrat fire, and Gandhari watches in horrified detachment. Is that how far she has grown from her children? That they glory in the deaths of their cousins?

Cousins, who, actually turn out to be alive, as they find out after Princess Draupadi’s Swayamvara. Pritha’s five sons enter the Great Hall of Hastinapur in triumph, their wife at their side. Gandhari’s sons fume, that hanger-on Karna at their side. Gandhari tried so very many times to distance her son from Karna, but she had no success on that count. Bhrata Shakuni is as angry as they, and Gandhari does not understand what to do.

In the end, it works out for good as the Pandavas leave for Kandavprastha. They flourish there, and Gandhari is torn between happiness for Pritha’s joy that she writes of in her letters and foreboding for her children.

Gandhari is surprised when Duryodhana and Shakuni invite Pritha’s sons for the dice game. Yet, somewhere, she dares to hope, that all will, finally, be well, for she still held vestiges of belief in her brother and her son.

Instead, everything takes a turn for the worse. She loses every smidgeon of the thread that kept her bound with her brother in solidarity, with every despairing cry that Draupadi uttered.

That is why, on the eve of the war, her brother’s baleful eyes on her, the easy accord that existed between them long forgotten, she says, voice clear, “May righteousness triumph”.


End file.
